McLinden, Cassie; Barclay, Elaine M --- "Australian Media Portrayals of Domestic Terrorism: The Sydney Siege and Parramatta Shooting" [2018] CICrimJust 2; (2018) 29(3) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 209

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Australian Media Portrayals of Domestic Terrorism: The Sydney Siege and Parramatta Shooting

Cassie McLinden^[*] and Elaine M Barclay^[†]

Abstract

Content analysis of two Sydney newspapers’ coverage of two recent terrorist events in Australia examined the way Australian media portray domestic terrorism. The findings revealed the existence of Orientalism (Said 1977) in Australian media portrayals of terrorism. This produced an enemy-other frame evident in the portrayal of the offender, the Muslim community and the wider portrayal of domestic terrorism. This enemy-other frame reinforced a national identity of what it means to be Australian. Social expectations concerning employment, economic contribution and values of kindness, loyalty and multiculturalism underlined the expected behaviours of individuals, separating the offenders, and to an extent the broader Muslim community from the collective Australian identity. The results affirm that media coverage of domestic terrorism goes beyond mere reporting of a terrorist event. Rather, the media employs multiple discursive frames to establish context and societal expectations regarding acceptable behaviour, national belonging, criminal justice procedures, and the role of security agencies.

Keywords: media – terrorism – orientalism – othering – national identity – Lindt Cafe – Australia

Introduction

The London bombings in 2005, perpetrated by British citizens, signified a shift in how Western governments respond to the threat of Islamic terrorism. Instead of the threat emanating out of the Middle-East, a new style of terrorist had emerged and what was once regarded as transnational, was now recast as domestic terrorism. The lone-wolf and home-grown terrorist had acted as a catalyst, turning focus to domestic policy and research to understand this seemingly new phenomenon (Crone & Harrow 2011, p. 521). This article examines this phenomenon in Australia.

Media representations of terrorist events shape public understandings which facilitate law and order debates within public, legal and political domains and pressure governments to respond. This article examines how the media frames domestic terrorism in Australia. Framing is the way narrative structure influences human consciousness through written communication (Entman 1993, p. 52). Importantly, this article is concerned with the nature and extent of government framing within media reporting; specifically, the tone of language introduced by government spokespersons to define an issue that suits the current political agenda (Entman 2003, p. 417).

Two recent events in Australia garnered significant attention in the Australian media. The first was a siege in Sydney’s city centre and the second was the murder of a civilian employee of New South Wales (‘NSW’) Police Force in Parramatta, a suburb in Sydney’s west. New South Wales Police labelled and responded to these incidents as ‘terrorist events’ and were reported as such by the media. This shaped public response.

On 15 December 2014, Man Haron Monis entered the Lindt Café in the heart of Sydney’s commercial business district. Producing a gun, and branding a flag used by extremist groups such as the Taliban, he ordered customers and staff be locked in the café as hostages. In a standoff lasting 17 hours Tory Johnson, the manager of the café, was killed by Monis, while Katrina Dawson, a customer of the café, and Monis were killed by police bullets and shrapnel when police stormed the building (DPMC 2015, p. 2). Monis was known to police; he had a lengthy criminal history, was on bail as an accessory to murder and had been found guilty of sending hate mail to families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan (‘Soft law and poor intel’ 2014). The siege brought NSW bail laws, the effectiveness of the criminal justice system and the NSW Police response to terrorism to the forefront of media discourse.

Less than a year later, on 2 October 2015 in Parramatta, NSW Police civilian employee Curtis Cheng was shot and killed by 15-year-old Farhad Jabar Mohammad, who also fired several shots towards Parramatta Police Headquarters before he was killed by police who responded to the incident (‘Gunman who shot dead NSW police employee’, 2015). Contextually, this event reinforced the growing fear of youth radicalisation (see Australian Strategic Policy Institute 2015, p. 13).

These events provide insight into modern-day terrorism — public acts of violence, designed to incite fear, however insubstantially inspired by groups such as ISIS or al-Qaeda, that in practice have a more complex domestic origin. That police defined these events as ‘terrorism’ is central to this article, as that shaped media portrayals of what occured. Accordingly, this article adopts a broad definition of home-grown or domestic terrorism as consisting of offenders who are long-term residents or citizens of Australia, radicalised in the West and acting autonomously, with insubstantial ties to any known terrorism organisation (Mullins 2007, p. 7). This broad definition allows for a greater understanding of the contemporary threat to Australian national security (Mullins 2007, p. 1).

As there has been little academic research into these terrorist attacks in Sydney, this article provides an analysis of how Australian media portrayed these events. The study builds on the work of Colic-Peisker, Mikola and Dekker (2016) who also analysed media coverage of the Sydney siege. However, the present study differs by examining two terrorist events, rather than one. The aim of the study was to ascertain the discursive frames used in news construction, rather than interpreting the effects of media reports on public reaction. Specifically, the study addressed the following questions:

• What is the nature and extent of government framing of terrorist events within media reports?

• How are the roles of ‘offender’ and ‘victim’ presented in media reports of terrorist events?

• To what extent does ‘Orientalism’ feature in media framing of terrorist events?

The findings contribute to academic discourse around media representations of terrorism by revealing that current media framing goes beyond presenting the mere facts of an event to include a wide range of terrorism aspects, such as social cohesion, emergency response, and the promotion of Australian identity.

In what follows, the factors that influence media reporting of terrorist events are discussed. An overview of the theoretical and methodological approach to the content analysis of two key Australian newspapers follows. The results are presented and discussed according to key themes identified in the analysis and concludes by considering the contributions of this study to the literature and recommendations for future research.

Reporting terrorism

When constructing news, journalists can elect to quote those who occupy positions of authority to present an official version of events by establishing the parameters of a discussion and framing an issue in a particular way (Crelinsten 1989). Known as ‘primary definers’, these authoritative individuals include politicians, police or experts in a relevant field (Crelinsten 1989, p. 318). In terrorism coverage, government frames can be introduced through politicians emphasising certain rhetoric. This can influence the media agenda and set the tone for discussion. For example, in covering a terrorist event, the media can communicate through a fear-based discourse (Altheide 2006; Collins 2014; Larson 2006; Lee 2007; Mythen & Walklate 2006). This rhetoric creates an archetypal ‘criminal other’ that transcends fear of crime to become fear of certain groups of people (Larson 2006). The concept of the ‘other’ can be found in the seminal works of Becker (1963), who described outsiders as ‘people who are judged by others to be deviant and thus to stand outside the circle of “normal” members of the group’ (Becker 1963, p. 19).

Government and the media

Through its ability to freely critique other centres of power such as governments, the media informs citizens and facilitates democracy. This ability, known as ‘the fourth estate’, promotes the media as a government watchdog, providing the public with information on certain issues, policies and events (McGarrity 2011, p. 274). However, those in political power often take advantage of the media’s dependence on official sources of information (Crelinsten 1989; McGarrity 2011). McGarrity (2011) argues that during a terrorist event the government exploits this dependence by determining what information is released, and how and when it is released to the media.

The presence of government framing in media coverage of terrorism has been well established (Altheide 2006; Brinson & Stohl 2012; Papacharissi & de Fatima Oliveira 2008). Brinson and Stohl (2012), in examining American and British media coverage of the London bombings in 2005, found that framing and particular language introduced by government spokespersons was replicated in media reporting further reinforcing the government’s counter-terrorism agendas. In American coverage, the American press continually linked the London bombings to al Qaeda, corresponding with statements made by President Bush. In contrast, the British press repeated the British government’s policy of labelling the attacks as ‘domestic terrorism’ (Brinson & Stohl 2012, p. 272). American news, by signalling to the American public that the London bombings were internationally linked with al Qaeda, reinforced the ‘war on terror’ frame, highlighting the threat of Islamic terrorism as originating out of the Middle-East as opposed to a domestic threat. In contrast, the British media portrayed the attacks as isolated and domestic in nature (Brinson & Stohl 2012).

These findings highlight how each respective government’s primary definers introduced the discursive parameters of the media’s coverage of the 2005 London bombings. As the bombings were perpetrated by British citizens rather than foreign jihadists, the coverage of this attack in American news is particularly misleading. Accordingly, the present study sought to determine if government framing featured in coverage of the Sydney siege and the Parramatta shooting.

Framing the outsider, the other, the non-member

A major focus of academic literature has been the communication of fear and risk through media coverage of crime and terrorism (Collins 2014; Larson 2006; Lee 2007; Mythen & Walklate 2006). Lee (2007, pp. 187–98) argues that crime coverage emphasises a culture of fear by consistently writing through a framework of threat; that no one is safe and danger is imminent. Collins (2014, p. 79) posits that, rather than creating fear, news reports have the potential to direct fear in that they ‘do not just tell us to be afraid, rather they tell us who to be afraid of’.

Altheide (2006) proposed that American newspapers used a discourse of fear, combining terrorism with nonconformity, deviance and crime as a threat. This led to media coverage pointing towards the ‘other, the outsider, the non-member’ (p. 419). On the media’s influence in creating a moral panic Cohen (2011, p. 10) states: ‘Their very reporting of certain facts can be sufficient to generate concern, anxiety, indignation or panic.’

In ‘othering’ a person or group of people, the media separates them from the rest of the law abiding public and defines what is and is not acceptable behaviour in society (Altheide 2006, p. 419; Cohen 2011, p. 11). The creation of a criminal other as separate from the rest of society is significant in assessing the discourse surrounding the portrayal of domestic terrorism. The present study aimed to identify who is given a voice in setting media agenda and how certain groups or individual people are portrayed in the wider context of terrorism in Australia.

The influence of Orientalism in the framing of the Muslim ‘other’

The concept of ‘othering’ certain people or groups of people has been a point of previous Australian studies of media coverage of terrorism (Akbarzadeh & Smith 2005; Lewis & de Massi 2007; Manning 2003; Mahony 2008, 2010). The creation of the ‘Muslim other’ can be seen in the theoretical underpinnings of Orientalism to describe a ‘historical phenomenon, a way of thought, a contemporary problem, and a material reality’ as an ‘ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority’ (Said 1977, pp. 53–5). Gerbner’s (1992) examination of how Orientalism is reflected in the media, argued that Western media employ stereotypes in terrorism coverage. Media reports of each terrorism incident consistently portrayed terrorists as unpredictable and irrational, symbolising a menace that rational, Western means cannot reach or control (Gerbner 1992, p. 96).

A perceived divide between Eastern and Western values and cultures is prominent in most Australian research on media portrayals of terrorism (Akbarzadeh & Smith 2005; Manning 2003; Mahony 2008, 2010). Lewis and de Masi’s (2007) textual analysis of two Melbourne newspapers examined how dividing discourse was propagated in coverage of the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings. Despite Indonesia’s relative physical proximity to Australia, the study found that Indonesia was a cultural and linguistic mystery, habitually viewed with fear and suspicion by the Australian public (Lewis & de Masi 2007, p. 70). This resulted in the majority of articles attributing blame to a monolithic Islam without reference to specific regional, cultural, historical or political factors that could contribute to terrorism in Indonesia (Lewis & de Masi 2007). Omitting these factors hinders public debate on a range of issues such as immigration and government intrusion on civil liberties.

Analysing media coverage of the 2014 Sydney siege, Colic-Peisker et al. (2016) found that coverage emphasised Australian values of community, solidarity and multiculturalism. The promotion of these values within the national identity placed Muslims on the margin of acceptance and solidarity. This was achieved by applying a simplistic binary of good and bad Muslims particularly in media portrayals of the offender (Colic-Peisker et al. 2016). The offender’s citizenship and his place in the Australia community were questioned, while other ‘good’ Muslims were portrayed as a part of the collective Australian identity, as ‘people just like us’ (Colic-Peisker et al. 2016, p. 280). This implies that the collective Muslim community were viewed through an ‘enemy-other frame’; distinctly separate from the broader Australian community and identity.

Colic-Peisker et al’s. (2016) study differs from other research by focusing on the community and the sense of solidarity that emerges after a terror event. Their study combined media articles, political leaders’ media statements, and transcripts of press conferences to explore the public reactions to the Sydney siege. However, the study examined only one week of media outputs. Such a short time frame may only capture instantaneous and potentially knee-jerk responses to an event. Nevertheless, their findings were useful for providing a comparison for the content analysis conducted in the present study. Orientalism was employed to examine the ‘othering’ of certain groups within media reporting of terrorist events because the concept is broader than a mere east/west divide and encompasses notions of ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘racism’, among others.

The ideal victim

By separating offenders from the rest of society, the media also creates an archetypal victim. The ‘ideal victim’ is an individual who, when wronged by crime, is readily given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim (Christie 1986, p.18). Furthermore, ‘the victim is everything the offender is not ... he is a stranger, she is home-grown, and he is a visible minority and she is white’ (Christie cited in Collins 2014, p. 81).

Schissel (2006, p. 51) comments that victim portrayals serve two purposes: to evoke a passionate response and to create simplistic and compelling explanations of victimisation. By mirroring the typical news consumer, media portrayals of victims can elicit in the reader the idea ‘that this could be me’ (McShane & Williams 1992, p. 267). This contextualises events for news consumers. They identify with the victim and distance themselves from the offender. The role of the offender is cast as separate from society, their actions counterproductive to accepted norms, which heightens public empathy for the victims. Thus the use of this stereotype provides individualised context to news consumers by personalising victimisation. This assessment was significant in the present analysis of victim and offender portrayals. Aligned with Colic-Peisker et al’s. (2016) study that emphasised the reinforcement of Australian values in determining good and bad, the portrayal of victims is important in implementing frames that separate offenders from the rest of society.

Method

This study employed a content analysis to examine how the Sydney siege and Parramatta shooting were reported in two key Australian newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald (‘SMH’) and the Daily Telegraph (‘DT’). Content analysis applies a set of procedures to draw valid inferences from text (Weber 1990, p. 9). It provides a way to identify the nature and extent of trends in communication content and audit the content against objectives. Therefore, content analysis was appropriate for examining and quantifying how domestic terrorism was portrayed by Australian media (Weber 1990).

Materials

Newspapers were chosen over other electronic and digital media platforms because this research was primarily concerned with the discursive frames used in news construction rather than interpreting the effect of discursive frames on public reaction. Additionally, the use of print media provided a straightforward process for analysis that resulted in a deeper qualitative understanding that may have otherwise been limited if other digital or electronic media types were chosen. Compared to platforms such as television or social media, print media provided accessible data in an ‘easy-to-read’ format that was ideal for analysis.

Fairfax’s SMH and News Corp Australia’s DT were chosen as these papers have the highest readerships in NSW. Both papers are published in tabloid format. This is particularly important considering Fairfax changed from a broadsheet format to tabloid in 2013. Despite the change, the publisher insisted the editorial tone and style of journalism would remain the same (‘Fairfax mastheads go compact, not “tabloid”‘, 2013). This was significant during the analysis for comparing the tone of each paper’s coverage of the two terrorist events.

Procedure

The analysis, conducted over a one-month time frame for each event, examined articles in two ways to provide a comprehensive investigation of the nature and extent of discursive frames of both events. First, key themes present within the media coverage were identified and quantified according to the extent they were used. Second, the tone of specific language used by journalists in articles were coded as positive, negative, neutral or mixed category. Factiva, a global news database, was employed to extract the data based on the reliability of results of a pilot study. A series of search words that generated the most exhaustive return of articles were applied. For the Sydney siege, these included, ‘Sydney Siege’ or ‘Man Haron Monis’, ‘Martin Place’, ‘Domestic Terrorism’, ‘Tori Johnson’ or ‘Katrina Dawson’. For the Parramatta shooting, the terms ‘Parramatta Shooting’, ‘Domestic Terrorism’, ‘Curtin Cheng’, ‘Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar’ or ‘New South Wales Headquarters’ were used.

A time frame ranging from the day of each event until a month following was implemented for each Factiva search. Articles that did not directly relate to the Sydney siege, Parramatta shooting or a portrayal of domestic terrorism in general, or articles that appeared more than once due to later editions, were excluded from analysis. Only the initial edition of an article was used.

A wide range of article types including news, supplements, opinion pieces, lifestyle blogs, news reviews and articles from the television and entertainment sections of the newspapers were accessed. The inclusion of these sections and not others, such as letters to the editor, was based upon the aim of the study — to analyse discursive frames in news construction rather than examining public reaction to media reports. Furthermore, these article types reflect the broadest reporting styles of both papers, representing a conscious decision by an editor to include various voices and opinions on such a dominant information-sharing platform.

Coding

The analysis coded themes rather than a single word or sentence. This allowed a broader range of language structures to be analysed as a theme can be expressed in a single word, sentence or across an entire article (Holsti 1969, 116). It provided an analysis of not only what was present in media coverage but also what had been omitted. The creation of themes was identified through repeated reading of the source material until no new themes were evident.

Importantly, it was decided that any description of an offender would be coded as ‘Portrayal of the Offender’ when an article went beyond a basic description. This was pertinent for the analysis of the Parramatta shooting, where the offender was often described simply as ‘an offender’. Content was considered in analysis when the offender was described as a ‘crazed terrorist’ (McClellan 2015, p. 5) or ‘15-year-old-baby-faced boy’ (Ireland 2015, p. 35) rather than a common description such as ‘15-year-old Farhad’ (Davies & Bagshaw 2015, p. 6). This ensured that the number of times this theme was coded was not skewed when comparing frequencies across all codes. While some understanding could have been gained by analysing an ordinary description of the offender, past research has warned against the overuse of racial stereotypes when describing those accused of terrorism (Gerbner 1992, 96). By employing this criterion into the coding scheme, this study assessed whether Orientalism was present in Australian reporting and how it was depicted through the ‘Portrayal of the Offender’.

To understand the tone of the specific language used by journalists, each article was then placed (albeit subjectively) into a positive, negative, neutral or mixed category based on previous research by Akbarzadeh and Smith (2005) and Mahony (2008, 2010). Positive reporting was defined by a focus on the more socially desirable aspects of a terror event. Outlined in Spencer (2005), these aspects included emergency responses, and the defiance and solidarity of victims and the wider community. To be considered positive, a theme was coded with the absence of inflammatory language that incited hate or a stereotypical version of Islam, refugees and immigration.

Thus, negative articles were characterised by the use of inflammatory language. Negatively constructed themes also focused on the negative aspects of terrorism by linking wider social issues such as crime and immigration to Islam and the wider Muslim community. Themes considered negative were generally reported through an oriental lens and involved the portrayal of non-Western cultures as other, alien and distinctly different (Akbarzadeh & Smith 2005, p. 4).

Neutrally constructed themes portrayed neither positive nor negative connotations and largely did not express a personal opinion by the journalist. As expected, the content of themes placed in this category mainly focused on stating the facts of each event, rather than describing it. Mixed categories combined positive, negative and neutral characteristics in reporting.

Sampling, reliability and validity

The coding scheme and data were piloted prior to the final analysis. Forty articles, the first and last five from each paper on each terror event, were used to test the reliability and validity of the method. Only the study author was involved in the coding process which alleviated issues surrounding inter-coder reliability (Weber 1990, p. 17). While the reproducibility and accuracy of data may be limited by the analysis being undertaken by one coder, the consistency in results of previous Australian research, and the adoption of similar measuring and coding procedures, enhances the reliability of the data and coding scheme (see Akbarzadeh & Smith 2005; Lewis & de Masi 2007; Manning, 2003). To ensure validity in the data, this study was informed by past studies and a detailed review of the literature to develop a strong understanding of the source material.

Results

The Factiva search generated a total of 628 articles matching the search words for the Sydney siege and Parramatta shooting. From this, 215 were omitted due to lack of relevance or duplication. The Sydney siege produced significantly more articles than the Parramatta shooting with 464 articles and 164 articles respectively. The variance can be attributed to the differences in each event. The Sydney siege lasted 17 hours and involved the taking of hostages. The Parramatta shooting was over in a matter of minutes. Comparing the number of articles between the two newspapers, in both events, the DT produced the highest number of articles. The DT was also coded more times across both events (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Total number of articles published by each paper for each terrorist event

Repeated reading of the source materials produced 20 distinct themes that were subsequently coded 589 times in total. The most frequent themes, ‘Portrayal of Offender’, ‘Government Response’, ‘Failing of the Criminal Justice System, Security Agencies and Government’, ‘Focus and Portrayal on Victim/s’, ‘Portrayal of Terrorism’, ‘Aftermath’, ‘Social Cohesion’ and the Islamic Community Response’ were each identified more than 30 times (see Figure 2).

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^[*] Department of Criminology, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of New England, Armidale NSW 2351, Australia. Email: [e-mail].

^[†] Department of Criminology, Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of New England,

Armidale NSW 2351, Australia. Email: [e-mail].